Turns out that a lot of people watched the President’s speech on jobs Thursday night:

According to the LA Times more folks watched President Obama than tuned into opening game of the NFL season, which drew 27.5 million viewers. The President has given other speeches that pulled more viewers–like his first speech to a joint session of Congress in February 2009 and the night he announced the death of Bin Laden–but some recent major speeches did not have the pull to push through the clutter and get the Nation’s attention. This one did. A big reason why is because President Obama was able to count on Republicans being predictable assholes.

When he announce the speech to be at the same time as the first Rick Perry GOP debate one of two things would happen: either he would talk on Wednesday or the speech would be moved to Thursday. If it was Wednesday the debate would be pushed back an hour and that is what it looked like the outcome would be until Rushbo demanded that Boehner do something about it. In a rapid response to Limbaugh, the Orange Speaker became the first Speaker of the House to refuse the request of a President to speak to Congress. He suggested Thursday and President Obama accepted the change.

This, of course, generated a wave of howls and outrage from the predictable precincts of the left. The wingnuts celebrated and the media played up the controversy. The effect was to let even low information citizens know that the President was giving a major speech right before the start of football–and many of them decided to watch. This resulted in the GOP debate being a less than one day story and the President’s speech dominating the political news cycle–and framing the political agenda for the Fall–even as we head into the 10th anniversary of 9-11 and concerns of another possible attack.

“I wonder, does the GOP regret forcing the WH to move the date of Obama’s speech? Just imagine if he’d given it the night of the GOP debate. The next day, he’d be splitting the news cycle with Perry and Romney. Now, of course, he’s monopolizing it to the point where even a possible attack on NY isn’t crowding him out.”

Instead, they were predictable assholes about it and allowed the President to use them a foils. Now we are in for a fall where the President and the vast majority of Americans are demanding action on jobs. The President has a plan that will put money in everybody’s pocket, create jobs and help the economy. You can watch the White House’s enhanced version of the speech (with charts and other details) here. This is a well thought out plan and he is daring the Republicans to block it. He is counting on them being assholes. I think when the dust settles he will win this fight, but he will need our help. As Tim F. points out here is how you can get in touch with your Member of Congress and your Senator:

I wonder, does the GOP regret forcing the WH to move the date of Obama’s speech?

[Snicker]

Regret. Regret requires an ability to reflect on past actions and admit one was wrong.

If the GOP even realizes this didn’t work out for them, they’re grumbling about the socshulust liberal lamestream media paying so much attention to President Obama when it should be slobbering over Gov. Rick “Do you smell something burning?” Perry.

Apologies for all the superfluous bolding in my #7. For some obscure reason, the unbold tag somehow mysteriously failed to engage. I can’t imagine why. Word Press has never given me a scrap of trouble before now.

Could it be? no, it couldn’t be could it? It couldn’t be that this was precisely what the President intended by saying Wednesday knowing that the Repubs would be dicks and refuse and then hyping up the speech so much so that people would watch it just to see him fail and then hit it out of the park? is that too much eleven dimensional chess? He definitely is lucky in some things but you do make your own luck, I believe.

I don’t think the fortune was not having to split time with Romney and Perry if the speech was Wednesday; the fortune was having anyone listening to him on Thursday not giving a shit what the Republican response (if there had been one) might be because everyone would be watching football after the speech.

gee willikers, i wonder how many people watched the last non-sotu joint address to congress about the healthcare bill? remember that one? must have been 60-70 million, right? because then the media started to sabotage his presidency with their lack of coverage, and nobody watched his speeches anymore, right? until this latest masterstroke of political cunning? that’s the advanced obotics theory?

…oh. that sounds familiar. actually, that sounds very familiar. shoot, that even resembles the rating for some random speech declaring the end of the combat mission in iraq that nobody remembers or cares about.

it’s almost as though there’s some sort of structural factor in how many americans sit down to watch this president when he speaks in prime time. and that the rating for thursday is not only not shocking or surprising in any way, but is the exact rating the data tells us to suspect. that’s weird.

it’s almost as though the date didn’t matter at all. and dennis is completely wrong. the president could have given his speech on a wednesday, or a thursday, or even labor day monday itself, and roughly 30 million people would have watched. yay data.

it’s almost as though there’s some sort of structural factor in how many americans sit down to watch this president when he speaks in prime time. and that the rating for thursday is not only not shocking or surprising in any way, but is the exact rating the data tells us to suspect. that’s weird.

I’m going to wade through the dripping sarcasm inherent in your comment to address the substance here: I think it actually would be very instructive to see a graph of the ratings for various presidential addresses accounting for factors like number of networks, day of week, location (joint address vs. oval office) – at least since the advent of cable television. Also, one should be able to factor in how many of the households actually watched and then watched NFL, for instance.

You would have to admit that a presidential address on health care is a pretty big ticket item. Killing Bin Laden is a pretty big ticket item. I don’t think you can draw *any* conclusions from a couple of data points.

I ran into a Doctor of Psychology and we discussed Rush’s addiction to scented candles. We got techie, but he loved my comment that, “There’s not enough scented candles in the world to cover the stench of a rotted soul.”

Really? Oh, look, it’s the ‘Obama’s playing three-dimensional chess’ meme again. The fact is that Obama wanted Wednesday, Boehner ordered him to come on Thursday, and he obeyed. Spin that all you want.

As for “daring” the Republicans to block the jobs proposal? Of course the Republicans will block it. It’s what they do, it’s what gets them votes, and they are very good at it. What would be “daring” for a Republican would be to support Obama’s bill. But that won’t happen, because any House member who supports anything that Obama does will get primaried in 2012.

I didn’t watch the jobs speech.

I don’t care about Obama’s job plan.

Nothing Obama tries to do will get through the House until November 3, 2012, and everyone who’s paying attention knows it.

The best possible option is that this is political theater meant to make the Republicans take the blame for the bad economy. But that would require a level of hardballing not seen in Obama since he took out Hillary in 2008.

The most likely option is that the Republicans will block, and block, and block, and Obama will be so desperate to show something – anything – he can trumpet as a legislative success that he bipartisanships his way to a ‘jobs’ bill that includes nothing but tax cuts and government service cuts. Just like he compromised on the budget. Just like he gave us a ‘health care’ bill that forces us to buy private, for-profit health insurance, no matter how high the insurers raise our premiums.

ETA: I can’t remember if it was aisce who made the point in an earlier thread by mistermix this morning about “reasonable disagreement,” but I agree with it. That shit you posted, however, is *not* it.

It goes without saying that I’m an Obot, but this is the next round in the rope a dope that Obama’s been playing since 2010. Just like George Foreman could be counted on to never pass up an opportunity to pound away, the Republicans can be counted upon to never pass up an opportunity to be assholes, because assholism is the source of their strength.

Ali adopted the rope a dope because he knew he couldn’t win a slugfest with Foreman, who had him beat on reach and power. The inherent advantages the Republicans have over Obama include (1) a lot of Americans are entitled, selfish assholes who live in a bubble of their own imagined virtue and (2) the racial divisions in the country.

Obama doesn’t have any tools like those to exploit. Liberals keep bitching about Obama not having a spine, but a lot of that bitching is based on a fantasy that there is anything like class solidarity in this country, that all Obama has to do is dip into that well and the Republicans will magically begin to fall at his feet. Ain’t gonna happen, at least not right now. There’s a reason the labor movement is weak, and (1) and (2) above have a lot to do with that. It isn’t an accident that labor power started to decline after the civil rights movement and the subsequent white backlash exploited by the Southern Strategy.

Any move towards solidarity is going to take a generation to happen, if it happens at all. Part of a chance of making it happen is having a black president who navigates the minefield with dignity and leaves the impression of a degree of success. You know, a president that generally holds the right wing at bay and gets a few significant things done, like killing Osama bin Laden, blunting an economic crisis, getting gays accepted in the military and moving toward universal health care. Right now, realizing that modicum of success matters more than any particular policy win.

@arguingwithsignposts: No, I think TBCC is right. We should hear Mad the Swine out. Who does he/she suggest is pure enough, strong enough, Left enough to lead us out of our pain and slay all conservatives?

I think certain groups of people have been talking primary since the Inauguration, if not the election. Just don’t fool yourself into thinking there’s going to be a serious primary challenger. The people claiming to be the true base of the party who want a primary challenge would probably fit into a mid-sized minor league baseball park.

Eh I think it’s more like he’s simply lucky in his enemies. The douchier people are the more likely their maneuvers will blow up in their faces. You make it sound like the President asked to address Congress expecting them, for the first time in history, to request he move the speech by a night. Luck comes from being in a good position when opportunity arises.

I don’t think it was necessarily eleven-dimensional chess or just his usual luck with opponents, but I do think it was going to be a win either way. If Boehner hadn’t been cowed by Rush into acting out as a dick, the caterwauling still would have guaranteed tremendous publicity. The GOP debate might not have been completely wiped off the news cycle, but at best it would have been Obama vs. all the Republican candidates (including the most crazy), which is very different in terms of publicity from Obama vs. the GOP nominee in a general election timeframe.

Sent a letter by snail-mail to Mark Kirk today. He’s generally a douche (as the video for a pre-Obama speech interview he did with a local TV station that’s on his website proves), but he did break with the party on voting to repeal DADT. Schakowsky and Durbin are my other Congresscritters, so no worries there, but I’ll email them messages of encouragement all the same.

I think the things we attribute to luck or 11-D chess are really just reflect Obama’s ability to make the best out of any situation and keep focused on what’s important, instead of getting distracted by political games that only insiders and news junkies care about.

I don’t think it’s that he expected them specifically to request demand he move the speech to the next night. I think it’s more that, like any good chess player of however many dimensions, he is aware of a number of various possible scenarios simultaneously, has strategies for addressing any of them, and takes advantage of his opponents’ weaknesses. He doesn’t always do this, of course, which is frustrating; but he does it often enough that I think it’s the way his mind wants to work and/ or that he has trained it to work.

@Emma: aisce smells a lot like the patronizing superiority troll who used to post under the name of the Arrested Development lawyer played by Scott Baio, who is immortalized in the “shallow, vapid and lacking in substance” (or something like that) tag

We’re supposed to primary Obama because of ‘schedulegate’? Can the firebaggers really not understand why they’re not taken seriously?

With respect to the ratings for the speech, keep in mind that one of the consequences of moving the speech to Thursday is that it had to start at 7 EST rather than 8 or 9 to avoid a conflict with football. It would be interesting to see how that affected West Coast viewing compared to prior speeches.

@ant: I’d be curious to know who they think would do it. No one who thinks they have a serious future in the Democratic Party, certainly. Stoller’s Tom Harkin suggestion was cute, the Hillary fantasy lives in some quarters, I understand Nader has more or less said he thinks someone else should do it. Dennis the K? I’m spinning through my mental rolodex, trying to think of somebody who would be more than a crank candidacy, much less a serious Kennedy-style challenge, even a damaging symbolic challenge a la Buchanan in ’92 (IIRC), coming up empty

i realize the internet basically exists for people of low self-esteem to get together in ad hoc tribes and “heh indeed” each other all day and preen and fluff their true believer plumage. maybe invent some other online enemies and sneer at them and get into blogwars, that’s always fun.

but reality is boring. sorry, your fevered delusions were once again found wanting in the face of cold hard data. there is no game being played. no chess. no eleven dimensions.

there’s no variance to the ratings data. the same thing happened that always happens. in fact, you could even posit that it’s roughly the exact same households that end up watching these sorts of speeches every time. probably because the ratings are a function of the office itself. when the president goes on tv, millions watch. every time.

how sad for you that there is no great conflict playing out that needs your utmost devotion to succeed! but alas the story is no more interesting than a resiliently popular president going on tv to give a speech about a topic of national importance, as the usual millions watch, all as the first step on the path to his inevitable and uncontroversial reelection. and that the passage of a jobs bill ultimately depends upon the political calculations of the speaker of the house’s office, and not anything that will or won’t be said on democratic leaning blogs.

i will not apologize for being a member of the nate silver school of politics. the world is boring and predictable. but please, enjoy your kwisatz haderach.

Just like he gave us a ‘health care’ bill that forces us to buy private, for-profit health insurance, no matter how high the insurers raise our premiums.

No, no, no. There’s a lot of reasons to dislike the PPACA, but that’s not one of them.
The mandate drops out if (your share) of any available premium goes above (a) percentage of income. The mandate is conditioned on “affordable”, which is a term of art. If you can’t find an “affordable” policy on a state exchange, the mandate disappears, as to you.
States use “reasonable” for medical support orders-medical support orders are an insurance mandate that is part of child support, and has been since 2005- and I assume that’s where they got the basic concept.
I’ll anticipate your next objection, if you don’t mind. “But they’ll just provide less valuable coverage!”
They can’t, because they got them on that end, too. They have to offer a set of guaranteed benefits in order to be a “federally-qualified plan”.

@Linda Featheringill: It makes you seem lucky, anyway. It’s kind of like in sports, where the good teams seem to have all the bounces to go their way. Some of that’s luck, but some of it is just keeping your head in the game and not getting distracted by hype or setbacks or whatever.

I saw this comment on the ThinkProgress piece about Koch brothers’ lobbyist admitting (on the tapes of their secret meeting) that the purpose of the Tea Party was to help Republicans, and I just had to share:

No it has to be bigger than just the Democrats. As long as we focus our energy on electing Liberal Democrats, even the most liberal will betray us, just as President Obama (most liberal candidate for the ’08 Dem nomination, even rivaling Kucinich given his positions at the time) is doing as we speak. We need to focus on building an independent protest and direct action movement big enough to force change whoever’s in power, like the civil rights, anti-war, and women’s movements of the ’50s-’70s.

Here’s some useful data from Mark Zandi, founder of Moody’s and a McCain advisor in ’08, supporting significant impact on umemployment if the President’s plan is passed. If your congressperson is conservative-to-“moderate”, this might be worth adding to your arsenal:

@kay: While I would have preferred a public option, I don’t get the hatred of the health care act on this point. For how long have liberals been documenting how many millions of people in this country don’t have health insurance? Most of them now will have access to it – in my book, a subsidized mandate is a small price to pay for that benefit.

It’s telling how knee-jerk supporters of Obama’s decision making can’t resist a gratuitous shot at a straw dog. Democratic allies that have dared criticized his judgement about anything, even something as superfluous as the Great Scheduled Speech silliness, are portrayed as consistently, foolishly naive.

if you want ratings for each primetime speech, google them yourself you lazy bum. the entitlement of the internet, sometimes, i swear. there are four in dennis’ post. i posted a link to another. you can fucking tell that primetime obama speeches get between 25-50 million viewers no matter what the topic. go find the afghanistan announcement speech: 25-50 mil. go find the 2011 state of the union: 25-50 mil. tens of millions watch the president when he speaks during primetime, whether out of respect for the man or just the office. go find the numbers for the bush administration: 25-50 million. it’s not interesting.

@ arguingwithsignposts

He says on the weekend of the 9/11 anniversary. Idiot.

yes, how shocking that two dozen members of an organization that was founded to attack our nation and had successfully hit our facilities abroad on multiple occasions, would enter our country with the intention of destroying buildings they had already plotted against.

you realize the entire point of the 9/11 report was to demonstrate how predictable the attack actually was, right?

Further attacks on WTC were not difficult to predict, and in fact since the early ’90’s more attacks were predicted.
And for airplanes flying into buildings, re: Tom Clancy, et al.
IOW, we had/have enemies, we have weaknesses, and they have reasons to strike those weak spots.

@Davis X. Machina: I will say that it does worry me that we are now extending tax cut mania to Social Security. I understand the rationale and the short-term politics, but it strikes me as very likely to come back and haunt us in a very bad way.

if you want ratings for each primetime speech, google them yourself you lazy bum.

Fuck you and provide a link, asshole. That’s what Nate Silver, your preferred point of reference, apparently, would do. He’d do the graph himself. Instead, you wave some hands about and “blah, blah, blah nothing to see here” and act like a fuckhead, and expect people to listen to what you have to say.

I at least gave you the benefit of a response other than fuck you, emoprog.

you realize the entire point of the 9/11 report was to demonstrate how predictable the attack actually was, right?

Your comment:

the world is boring and predictable.

While we could possibly agree on “predictable,” we obviously don’t agree on “boring.”
See also, too: Fukushima tsunami, or the Christmas 2004 tsunami, or the Joplin, Mo. tornados, or, for that matter, the Arab Spring – predictable? Yeah, if you just say “something’s going to happen sometime.”

@Corner Stone: I think there are at least two different meanings of “predictable” that could be at use here. In one sense, aisce maintains that presidential speeches get a predictable response, and we shouldn’t be surprised by the numbers. In another sense, 9/11 would happen because there was a threat, and it was likely (i.e., predictable) that there would be a further attempt at an attack.

@ant: Christ. Al Gore is not going to run. He was a good campaigner. Managed to clear the field of all Dems and won every delegate to his convention. But he’s not running.

Howard Dean has been very quiet and I haven’t seen him on the TV making statements about how the President needs to be more liberal and whatnot. So what’s he gonna do? Say “I’m running because I don’t think the president can win?” Yeah, that worked for Kennedy.

Nader is not a Democrat. Voters have only had an opportunity to look at him 5 other times for President. He’s done crap to build any party to support anyone but his national campaigns. One might think that he is a grifter at this point.

If you wanted to have a chance at a primary, it would need to be someone with name recognition. Someone like Olberman. There yah go. Draft Olberman.

Yep, I’m so bored of all this “11-dimensional” analysis punditry and obot-wankery.

Obama does NOT do all this crazy cynical scheming Macchiavellian media-manipulation ninja shit. He just does what he thinks is respectful, reasonable, and prudent. And lets the cynics destroy themselves.

He’s not superman. It only seems that way because he’s competing against idiots.

@arguingwithsignposts: If the Vancouver earthquake yesterday was predicted by our resident genius (BTW there was one, folks in my building said they noticed but I didn’t) then yeah he’s got a point. If he’s saying humans are predictable, I hope he has no money in the stock market.

The payroll tax cuts are just another form of deficit spending to get through this current mess. The reality around Social Security is that a fix bringing at least 90% of income back into the taxable payroll range is what needs to be on the table (which was the Reagan-O’Neill intention back in the ’80s, thrown out of whack by the growth in income inequality.) That’s the issue. Worrying about how “deficits” in the SS fund created by a short-term payroll tax holiday, which is all this is, doesn’t make much more sense than any other deficit-mongering in the current crisis. Political reality dictates that a payroll tax cut for a short period is one feasible way to get some more spending money quickly into average folks hands. Grumbling about this from the “left” doesn’t make sense if you’re against the general tendency – including Obama’s – to marshall anti-deficit rhetoric in the current crisis.

I’ve been reading about the exchanges. I think I have a pretty good big-picture at this point.
I predict that the wildly unpopular and controversial mandate will not be that big a deal, in practice. The people who might have issues around complying with the mandate are just not going to be that big a group, in numbers.
Once you lop off all the Medicaid people, and then all the employer-provided insurance people, and then lop off the people who are to receive subsidies and additional help w/out of pocket expenses, you’re down to a (relatively) small group of people.
There are going to be OTHER problems, I’m sure, it’s a complicated piece of legislation, but I think we all may have over-hyped the mandate as a HUGE problem :)

@arguingwithsignposts: Yes, they may be different. But bob lob jr didn’t bring 9/11 into it, you did.
And for whatever we think now, 9/11 specifically may not have been predictable but an attack against our weak ingress points surely was. Something was coming, and not a tsunami or volcano or Katrina. Something our enemies were cooking.

we can play this game all day. you’re wrong. the ratings are stable, and part of a narrow and predictable range. and no, i’m not going to plot it in excel for you.

and yes, the arab spring was predictable. all authoritarian regimes in the history of our species ultimately fall. usually when their leaders get old and their security regimes calcified. and especially when they fail to materially provide for their people.

“..if you want ratings for each primetime speech, google them yourself you lazy bum”.

I never had any use for William Buckley, but the man did possess a sense of humor. A disgruntled reader of his magazine (National Review?) once wrote him in anger, ending his letter with the demand: “Cancel my subscription”. Buckley wrote back, and said: “Cancel your own damn subscription”.

@Corner Stone: I don’t worry about the hole it opens in SS funding now, which is temporary rather than structural. I worry about the long-term imbalance as tax-cut mania extends to SS, so that taxes can go no higher on SS. Then we have a severe structural deficit and the argument for dismantling has a a strong foothold to get traction.

@kay: One thing I like about the exchanges is that Congress is required by law to participate in them. I always thought the most cynical thing about the GOP’s health care repeal effort is that they had no intention of denying themselves the ability to participate in the federal employees’ health plan.

I think it actually would be very instructive to see a graph of the ratings for various presidential addresses accounting for factors like number of networks, day of week, location (joint address vs. oval office) – at least since the advent of cable television. Also, one should be able to factor in how many of the households actually watched and then watched NFL, for instance.

I was specifically asking about ratings over time for various presidents, for comparison sake. Also, your suggestion that they are stable is a little bit off by your own definition. 43 million to 25 million is a pretty large swing. Why would that be? day of the week? network coverage? time of the speech?

IDK. It’s not my particular area of expertise. But it’s an interesting question. I’m not wrong on the merits. If you don’t want to plot it in excel (or provide a link to someone who has done the legwork) and provide some additional data related to those points, then stop making the argument, because you have no evidence.

and yes, the arab spring was predictable. all authoritarian regimes in the history of our species ultimately fall. usually when their leaders get old and their security regimes calcified. and especially when they fail to materially provide for their people.

@fuckwit: Obama also tends to have plan Bs and Cs plotted out and ready to go, so when the unexpected happens he has a decent fallback position. I think a lot of the appearance of 11D chess comes from the fact that he always operates with well-developed contingency plans.

@aisce: Like other forms of government, authoritarian regimes can last for centuries. On other hand, every form of government our species has ever developed has eventually fallen, so no surprise that authoritarian regimes eventually fall. Of course, that makes your comment completely vacuous, but whatever.

It’s going to be a process of elimination for individuals. I have health insurance (through my husband) so I won’t be subject to the mandate, but if I were mine would go like this: I won’t receive a subsidy (we’re above 400% of poverty) so I could purchase a policy on the exchange to satisfy the mandate or just take the tax hit.
If I were under 30, I could satisfy the mandate with a catastrophic (cheap) policy, but I’m not. But if I were, and I took the catastrophic-cheap route, I’d be foregoing any subsidy.
It’s complicated as a whole, but for any individual, it’s not all that difficult to slot yourself in.
Then there’s the whole “small business” route, so that will include a lot of the people who would have been subject to the mandate as individuals, but won’t be, as a practical matter, because they’ll fall in that “covered” group. I haven’t read the small business details yet.

Why would that be? day of the week? network coverage? time of the speech?

if you’re now arguing that the early time of the speech hurt ratings, you realize you’re now arguing against the advanced obotics theory that it was an 11-d checkmate that changed the world entire, right?

do you even know what you’re arguing about anymore?

@ jwb

no more vacuous than talking about earthquakes in vancouver. the pacific rim has frequent geological activity, and regimes like gaddafi’s have expiration dates. the world is less complicated than we make it.

Also, I don’t think that scheduling the speech was part of a cunning plan. I think it was beyond idiotic when people tried to treat it as a test of strength/toughness/fighting spirit. Likewise, it’s overthinking to treat it as something highly clever. He spoke on a different day. Whatever.

If it had been moved _up_ a day, some people would probably say _that_ was the best move ever, because then the Republican debate would look small-time, and others would probably say it was the worst move ever, because then the Republicans would drain momentum from Obama’s call to arms. It’s a self-fulfilling analysis.

@SiubhanDuinne: If you’ll note, I was not responding to you, I was responding to Cat Lady’s Dune comment with a bit of Dune geeking. I’m not sure what point of yours you thought I was responding to and took offense, but really, I wasn’t.

if you’re now arguing that the early time of the speech hurt ratings, you realize you’re now arguing against the advanced obotics theory that it was an 11-d checkmate that changed the world entire, right?

I’m not actually arguing either way on whatever 11-D chess, whatever about this particular speech. I was asking about the overall numbers related to presidential speeches *over time* including specific factors such as day of the week, topic, etc. I don’t have an opinion one way or the other whether the earlier time of the speech hurt ratings.

I was asking a social scientific question, not doing the obot/prog thing wrt your statement earlier.

I don’t really know/care whether schedule-gate was 11-D chess, or just general gop dickishness.

@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: Nearly an hour later and yet we are still waiting. I think we do our “anybody but Obama” brothers and ourselves a disservice by not hearing them out. We allow them to pop in and call for a primary candidate but never delve deeper. That allows them to piss us off without showing any intellectual strength or heft. If their intent is to piss on us, then fine. I think it is a much better plan to make them offer substance and defend their selected candidate. As happened here, they usually don’t have any offering and skulk away. Yet they’ve achieved there goal by pissing off Obots. Of course, while I writing this, maybe he came back with an offering.

@Hal: And if it was around in 1996, it would be about how Clinton was too conservative, and in 1992, it would be about how Clinton was too conservative and stabbed Jerry Brown in the back, and in 1988, it would be about how Dukakis wasn’t tough enough and stabbed Jesse Jackson in the back, and in 1984, it would be about how Mondale wasn’t using the right “framing” and stabbed Gary Hart in the back, and in 1980, it would be about how Carter was too conservative, and in 1976, it would be about how Carter was too conservative, and in 1972, it would be about how McGovern wasn’t using the right framing, and in 1968, it would be about how Humphrey wasn’t using the right framing and was too conservative and stabbed Gene McCarthy in the back.

It does look as if the presidential speech took the oxygen away from the republican debate, and it was a good speech.

He got a decent audience, and the speech timing squabble comes across as not much of anything. So I think he did well, and was not hurt by moving the time around. That’s not far from the OP, as far as I can tell.

I can alas and alack speak for only one Obot, and I am not pissed but mildly amused and genuinely curious. Are they thinking of a stunt candidate– Cindy Sheehan? Dan Choi? Cornel West? the above suggestion of Olbermann In ’12 seems as plausible as any. I’m sure if you googled you’d come up with at least one “Draft Feingold” site. At this point, Matt Stroller seems to represent the intellectual heft of the Primary Obama Front, and he came up with…. Tom Harkin.

Senate Democrats apparently released specifics on how each state will benefit, so that was amazingly coordinated, for Democrats :)

Ohio stands to benefit to the tune of nearly $4 billion in infrastructure improvements to highways, bridges, airports, and schools as well as to keep local teachers, police, and firefighters on the job under the roughly $450 billion jobs package President Obama put before Congress.
Michigan would receive more than $3.6 billion, according to figures supplied by U.S. Senate Democrats.

“There are private companies all across America just waiting to get to work,’’ Mr. Obama told Congress and the nation Thursday night.

It remains to be seen whether the package of payroll tax cuts for individuals and businesses, infrastructure improvements, unemployment benefits, and government support can win support in a debt-weary Congress. Mr. Obama plans to visit Columbus on Tuesday as part of a road tour to sell his jobs plan to America.

Former President Bush was very good at getting into local newspapers. During the 2004 campaign, to read Ohio newspapers, it was like he had someone on each paper’s staff. It was always very specific to Ohio, and I think that may matter more than national or punditry coverage for an incumbent ( Bush 2004, Obama 2012). People already know Obama, so his objective is to cut right to the chase and to specifics.

He needs no introduction, unlike a challenger, like Perry or Romney (or Kerry, in 2004).

Bush Credits ‘The Work That Was Done’ During ‘My Presidency’ For Osama Bin Laden’s Death
“The work that was done by intelligence communities during my presidency was part of putting together the puzzle that enabled us to see the full picture of how bin Laden was communicating and eventually where he was hiding,” he said. “It began the day after 9/11.”

@kay: Do you think that Democratic coordination owes something to the widely-disparaged EPA pollution-regulation decision, as a favor to Sherrod Brown among others? I’m stuck on that hunch but I haven’t seen much evidence for it yet…

Apologies to you. I seem to be very quick off the trigger lately and doing a lot of assuming, jumping to conclusions, and all that bad stuff. Dunno what’s going on, but I’m taking it out on innocent bystanders.

Cat Lady 48 was responding to and quoting my 46. Your 50 appeared to be a response to the quote she extracted . . . Screw it, too complicated and pointless to try to go back through my train of thought. Anyhow, sorry for snarling at you, Redshift.

@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Eh, not to give GWB admin ANY credit, but IMO there probably were a bunch of hard core intel pros who really wanted that freakin guy. And did what they could through every administration.

@gwangung: true, but I was thinking of energy and resources diverted to look for WMD’s and whatnot, and then of necessity looking into Iranian support of Moqtada al Sadr, Arab support of Sunnis, etc. Of course we can’t say for sure bin Laden wouldn’t have been gotten sooner, but it’s not an unreasonable suggestion either.

@B W Smith: Nope. Still nothing. I’m not so much pissed off as I am bored stiff by this sort of solution-free screeching from people who say they are progressive but on closer inspection are just pains in the ass.

@Corner Stone: there’s that, too, and I also tried to edit my comment to say that I do understand that “getting” bin Laden is largely symbolic. Just seeing that smirky little nitwit coming out of his hole has stirred up some of my old resentments.

@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It’s even more hilarious considering how conservatives insist Reagan won the Cold War all by himself.

Bush translation: “I was such a complete incompetent on counter-terrorism that even my sycophants have to give me a mulligan by claiming I kept the country safe ‘since 9/11’, but because there were some non-incompetent people who weren’t hounded out of government by my administration, you should give me credit for things I completely failed to do.”

Frankly, if Bush wants to remind people on this anniversary that he exists and he was president at the time, that’s fine with me.

@Jim, Foolish Literalist: When I read that Stoller had suggested Harkin, I doubled over in laughter. I like Harkin. He is a liberal stalwart with a generally excellent voting record. He is also in his 70’s and frankly, not a very dynamic guy. I’m considerably older than Stoller and I remember Harkin’s 1992 campaign. Like you, I would be very interested in their suggestion. I don’t believe they have anyone in particular in mind. It really is just a mechanism designed to get a reaction.

The midwest (liberal) Democrats were absolutely part of the failure of the climate change bill. Franken, Brown, etc., and since it was going absolutely nowhere w/out the some of the most liberal Democrats in the Senate, I don’t know why they haven’t been part of the Official Narrative on the (failed) climate change bill.

I love Sherrod Brown, and I will happily vote for him, but it’s just fact that environmental initiatives are very difficult politically (and factually! really!) for Democrats in the upper midwest.

It’s cold, it’s coal, it’s manufacturing, it’s ag, it’s even labor, and it’s high heating costs for poor people. It’s a problem, and I’m disappointed it isn’t being grappled with honestly, in my view. It isn’t going away. Ignoring it isn’t going to make it go away.

I read the long New Yorker piece on the failure of climate change legislation and I don’t know why this freaking elephant in the room wasn’t mentioned. It’s not like they hid it. They released a letter, for God’s sake.

I like Harkin. He is a liberal stalwart with a generally excellent voting record.

me too, I’ve been surprised we haven’t seen more of him in the last few years, given that he is, I believe, a good old-fashioned progressive populist and about as Heartlandy as Chris Matthews could wish for. Though as you say, not the most dynamic individual.

I can only guess Stoller came up with that name by going over some kind of voting checklist of his own devising.

@Redshift:
Somebody called the guy “President Bystander” once; this was after his administration fucked up the Hurricane Katrina response, but I think it fits the eight years he spent mostly goofing off on the job. If anything went right in those years, it was by accident — or against the wishes of his Dark Lord.

And, to be clear, I wouldn’t go as far as you. I think Sherrod Brown would happily support a job’s bill, EPA regs or no EPA regs.

Do I think the EPA regs might have had something to do with Sherrod Brown being up in 2012 in Ohio? Yeah. I do. But I can’t prove it.

Obama needs Brown in Ohio, 2012 and Brown needs Obama in Ohio, 2012.

They’re either both going to lose, or they’re both going to win. I can’t imagine an Obama supporter splitting a ticket and voting for lunatic neocon Josh Mandel (Brown’s probable challenger) and I can’t imagine a (liberal or populist) Brown supporter voting for Perry or Romney. It just wouldn’t make sense to do that.

Actually, we don’t HAVE to buy private, for profit insurance. We can be on medicare, or Medicaid, or we can have employer based insurance (either for, or not for profit) or we can purchase not for profit personal insurance.

@jwb: FWIW, according to my chess-master cousin, that’s what good chess is. Always have as many options fully planned as possible. I wouldn’t know. I have the attention span of a four-year-old when it comes to chess.

FOAD. Go back to Firedoglake and GFY. It’s one thing to disagree with what Obama does but you just want to throw a bomb and see what happens with the primary bullshit.

While you’re jerking off to pictures of Dennis Kucinich and Ralph Nader, the rest of us will be working our asses off to ensure that Cowboy Perry doesn’t get the Presidency.

Ah but your ilk has been quoted to say that you’d rather a GOP gets in so you can spend the four years coming up with a more “suitable” candidate.

And by the way, Hillary Clinton would have done the same militarily, she wouldn’t have gotten any health insurance for us – but I know, if it’s not single payer it’s useless and a waste of time. Who cares if it’s helped save people’s lives? Hillary Clinton also would have let the Bush Tax Cuts go through if it meant extending unemployment and she’d have bargained to stop the default of the country.

But again, you’re the “save by destroy” type. Destroy what’s there so someone who is liberal enough for you to nominate. Never mind the fact that they’d never have a chance in the general election.

And for whatever we think now, 9/11 specifically may not have been predictable but an attack against our weak ingress points surely was.

Any 10 people in a conspiracy could go to 10 street corners or malls and kill 100 people at a specified time quite easily. Al-qaeda, aryan nation, college football fans, teabaggers, balloonbagger racists, whomever. There is no shortage of weak points, yet this has not happened. I’ve often wondered why not.
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I don’t think anyone really wants a Primary. They want the prez held accountable for the grievance/resentment they are feeling. It’s all very emotional, most of these opeds. I volunteered for him, gave him money, and voted for him; but I don’t feel like he owes me anything personally. He should do the best he can with what he has to work with at the time. He’s not perfect, but I think he’s an extremely hard worker & extremely persistent. Primaries are lethal to presidents. I can’t understand why anyone would choose to do this unless they wanted him to lose. Maybe they’re just bored?? I’m quite proud of the president and his family.

Don’t feel bad, most bloggers and those of us who comment on blogs have the attention span of a four year old, which is why we’re doing this rather than enjoying a beautiful afternoon outside or getting our work done.

Thankfully, Obama seems to have a pretty long attention span, which is a common trait in successful people. Don’t you think it’s time to retire “eleven dimensional chess” as a shot at Obots, as it’s increasingly dogwhistle for people who are frustrated that they can’t replace their judgment for Obama’s. The thing is, they could if they could only focus long enough to get elected president . . . , i.e., it’s a shorter walk than you might think from David Brooks and Tom Friedman to BJ comment #N. The irony is that twits like Brooks and Friedman get paid when you can get arguably better quality bullshit for free here, because I don’t think anyone here takes themselves that seriously. I say this with all due respect, my fellow ADD brothers and sisters.

@Uncle Clarence Thomas: Not to be morbid, Uncle Clarence Thomas, but I’ve always wondered why multiple malls weren’t suicide bombed on the Friday after Thanksgiving, and then one a week until New Years.
Talk about the collapse of consumer society for roughly a dozen faithful believers and a few pounds of explosive.
Amazon and eBay can only counter so much.

Hear hear! Spoken like a true balloonbagger! Wish death upon another human being for suggesting a primary election for a political office! You only forgot to mention that President Obama bears absolutely no responsibility for his own behavior and how it affects people’s evaluation of his performance while in office.
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Don’t you think it’s time to retire “eleven dimensional chess” as a shot at Obots, as it’s increasingly dogwhistle for people who are frustrated that they can’t replace their judgment for Obama’s.

I disagree with your definition. 11-D Chess continues to be a method explanation for people who believe the president has gamed out all possible outcomes, and planned certain benefits from the beginning.
People who describe outcomes in reality don’t claim wild externalities.

Not to be morbid, Uncle Clarence Thomas, but I’ve always wondered why multiple malls weren’t suicide bombed on the Friday after Thanksgiving, and then one a week until New Years. Talk about the collapse of consumer society for roughly a dozen faithful believers and a few pounds of explosive.

Exactly. It’s almost as if Al-qaeda had no intention of doing anything remotely similar, yet the U.S. government used, and continues to use, this nonexistent threat to justify the imposition of a Secrecy and Surveillance State beneficial only to societal elites… Fortunately, President Obama is rolling all that back as he promised in his campaign for the presidency.
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This is not 11D chess. This is called paying attention and knowing your opponents. I wish I could find the link but in an interview w/ Brian Williams, Pres. Obama was asked if he watches cable news. He said, ‘not really because everyone plays their role and he never learns anything new.’ Basically the media is embarrassingly predictable. So are reactions from the left and the right. Maybe he didn’t map out exactly how this was going to happen, but when you consider who the players are in this game its not that hard to come up with possible scenarios/endgames.

@Corner Stone: No, it’s become a caricature used by people who want to feel justified in their belief that Obama’s generally incompetent and couldn’t possibly act strategically because he doesn’t do what they think they would have done if identically situated and who are magically blessed with the gift of 20/20 hindsight. 11-dimensional chess may be a made up game from Star Trek, but there is a real game called chess and it’s safe to say that people in DC play it from time to time. I’m not saying Obama hasn’t made some bad strategic and tactical choices, but a lot of the things that have gone badly are just the product of working in an adversarial political system in which parties with conflicting agendas are jockeying for power, exacerbated by bad economic and geopolitical circumstances.

@cat48: I do think you are right that such posts are a product of grievance and resentment. I learned a long time ago that no president will ever satisfy 100% of my governmental desires. Many times it does come down to choosing the person one thinks will meet the most of her agenda. I like President Obama. I believe he has the best of intentions and has worked hard during the most trying times our country has seen in my lifetime. That said, I have found fault with some of his policies. I just think when campaign season starts, it’s time to quit complaining and pitch in. When he wins re-election, there will be plenty of time to push for policies I prefer.

@SiubhanDuinne: I believe the comment to which you are taking exception is a play on another commenter’s mention of Obama as the Kwisatz Haderach. That ability of seeing all possible paths, selecting that which leads to the optimum outcome is that character’s unique mental ability.

I would agree with you about some policy disappointments, etc. I’ve just grown weary of so many personal attacks on his character & his personal traits It’s just not healthy to be so enraged about one person for long periods of time. At this point, these folks are sorta scary to me. The resentment is strong.

You only forgot to mention that President Obama bears absolutely no responsibility for his own behavior and how it affects people’s evaluation of his performance while in office.

That’s because I believe that he is responsible for his own behavior but I know that would totally shatter your perception. And a Balloonbagger? Really?

I think yelling “PRIMARY OBAMA!” constantly is counter-productive and while I don’t love everything about Obama, I know I’ll get more that I want with him than if it’s Cowboy Perry. To me, 1/2 a loaf is better than no loaf at all. You’d rather starve so you could be a martyr.

The back and forth between idiots who talk about primarying Obama and the nitwits who take this blather seriously and get their panties in a twist about “the Left” because it makes them feel good about their own “seriousness” – as though there’s even a hint of such at thing actually happening or that any of Obama’s critics outside of a couple of obscure websites would even have to think twice before opposing this strategy – is one of the most nonsensical bits of Kommenter Kabuki that transpires here…

I’m glad the White House moved his address. Pres. Obama gave a pretty impressive and tight speech that attracted more than 30 million Americans. I believe that his speech would have attracted similar numbers if it had been given the night before. The difference is, I think, a lot of those people, then, may have tuned into the Republican debate. He could have drastically expanded their audience. Anyone know what their numbers were?

Before we despair for America, that means that it’s very likely that as many people in the 18-54 demographic saw Jon Stewart eviscerate Rick Perry’s debate performance as actually watched Rick Perry’s debate performance.

@Bruce S: I watched the debate because I’m a glutton for punishment. I felt that Perry came across as mean-spirited and not too bright, but as a lib, that’s how I would expect to see it. One of my friends that is very conservative(mostly fiscally, not socially)was disgusted by Perry. It was the combination of many things but mostly Perry’s answer on the death penalty issue. My friend believes in the death penalty, but he couldn’t understand how one would feel no regret, no second thoughts about taking that many lives.

In a rapid response to Limbaugh, the Orange Speaker became the first Speaker of the House to refuse the request of a President to speak to Congress. He suggested Thursday and President Obama accepted the change.

This, of course, generated a wave of howls and outrage from the predictable precincts of the left. The wingnuts celebrated and the media played up the controversy. The effect was to let even low information citizens know that the President was giving a major speech right before the start of football—and many of them decided to watch.

This was fun to watch. Had to bite my tongue for a few days, probably as did everyone who saw the play. (Whether or not it was intentional.)

What I really want to see is actual significant demand-side stimulus. There have been a spate of articles in the last few days saying that businesses are looking for increased demand and don’t want/need, and wouldn’t be motivated by, supply-side stimulus. These are useful – perhaps they’re being orchestrated but they’re good to see.

I didn’t watch the jobs speech.
I don’t care about Obama’s job plan.
(snip)
Can we start talking primary yet?

Well, you can talk about it you want to, but I’m not going to bother talking about it with you. Because obviously if you don’t care enough to actually witness the things you’re objecting to then your opinion on things doesn’t matter much to me.

@B W Smith:
I was most disturbed by Perry’s death penalty answer because of the look on his face when he said it: he looked proud and smirky. Not only did he not have any second thoughts, he looked like he enjoyed it.

Just like he gave us a ‘health care’ bill that forces us to buy private, for-profit health insurance, no matter how high the insurers raise our premiums.

Wow. Let’s see:

It doesn’t force you to do anything; you pay higher taxes if you don’t buy health insurance. Or looked at it the other way, it’s a tax rebate for purchasing health insurance, much as is used in Australia.

You don’t have to buy for-profit insurance; each exchange will have a non-profit option.

One option in each exchange will be contracted for by the OPM. There are a range of restrictions in the bill on how rate increases occur. There are also restrictions on how the rates must be spent – the required spending on care, for example. And if the healthcare available is too expensive, the extra tax for not purchasing is removed.

@Gretchen: You are right, he does seem to enjoy the process. Living in deep red Georgia, I wasn’t surprised at all at his attitude or that of the audience. I see it all the time. If you’re found guilty, no matter the evidence or circumstances, there are many who believe it is their God-given right to dispose of you. They are very cavalier about it. I have been thinking that also explains why they think women seeking abortions are cavalier about it. It is pure and simple projection.

[…] A lot of people watched the President’s speech Thursday night, 27.5 million, to be exact. And we have the GOP to thank for it. When the White House announced that the jobs speech would be at the same time as the first Rick Perry GOP debate one of two things would happen: either he would talk on Wednesday or the speech would be moved to Thursday. If it was Wednesday the debate would be pushed back an hour and that is what it looked like the outcome would be. But then Rush Limbaugh jumped in. Balloon Juice continues: […]

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[…] A lot of people watched the President’s speech Thursday night, 27.5 million, to be exact. And we have the GOP to thank for it. When the White House announced that the jobs speech would be at the same time as the first Rick Perry GOP debate one of two things would happen: either he would talk on Wednesday or the speech would be moved to Thursday. If it was Wednesday the debate would be pushed back an hour and that is what it looked like the outcome would be. But then Rush Limbaugh jumped in. Balloon Juice continues: […]